Display of Doom Comes Together!

Well even though I haven’t posted in awhile, I have been busy! I designed, ordered, and received custom machined brass parts that solder to the LED boards so I can mount them. These brackets allow me to mount the display boards without having anything that passes through the board or anything like that- this is important of course if you want a matrix that looks good.

I spent about a week looking for brass U channel stock to make the brackets, but I came up empty. The “legs” have to 1/16″ thick and spaced 1/2″ apart. This seems to be unobtainum. While I found plenty of U channel, it had 1/8″ thick legs, which wouldn’t work. It *has* to be 1/16th of an inch or else they’d hit chips and routes and stuff which is definitely Bad(tm).
(click ’em and watch most of the pics grow)

Brackets as received, and how they will mount on the PCB.

I soldered one on the board and it fits perfect.

Aaaand, all 5 installed.

After soldering 5 brackets to all 13 boards I have (12 good, 1 for parts and testing), it was time to mount them. I went to Lowes and bought all the materials needed. plexi, 1 by 6, and two kinds of plywood. The board that everything mounts to is 1/2″ thick plywood. It’s 48*32 inches which is in the “friggin’ huge” category! The entire unit will be about 34*54 inches when done, and under 5 inches thick. Inside will be 12 LED boards, 12 power supplies and the controller along with a blower I salvaged from a microwave oven. I designed the unit so I could mount 16 boards, if 4 more ever show up (anyone got extras? please? 🙂 but I will only stuff 12 for now. I have one more board than this, but it’s missing alot of LEDs and has tons of problems. I used it for fixing the other 12, and for testing stuff so I didn’t screw up the good boards.

Anyways, enough of that. here’s the pics that everyone wants to see I’m sure:

What 192 LEDs wide looks like! (did this so I could get the holes all drilled right)

All holes for displays drilled, and this is the 6*2 array of boards that I will be using.

o, it is so nice 🙂
I am a new learner of electronic stuff and using arduino board which is open source.
I am actually working on a project to remediate acoustic sound properties into a LED matrix display, do you have any idea on where to get the component? I have tried to do some research on this, and find the 8×8 LED matrix and also MAX7219 IC are quite suitable for arduino, as I can easily control each LED add up to 64 in total. Just don’t know where to get it and fix it. Do you have any idea?